1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an audio relay apparatus and an audio relay method, and is preferably applied to an Audiovisual (AV) system that make it possible to relay a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) audio data supplied from the DVD player to a television receiving set that is not compatible with any High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the HDMI standards have been stipulated for the purpose of transmitting digital video signals and digital audio signals by way of a single cable and signal selection apparatus have been proposed to make it possible to effectively select any of a plurality of signals input from a plurality of connected equipments by way of an HDMI (see, for example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-357029).
Besides, in the field of AV systems, it has been made possible in recent years to provide high quality sounds of movie contents output from a home use DVD player to a home theater appliance by way of an HDMI cable conforming to the HDMI Standard.
More specifically, with such an AV system, DVD video data and DVD audio data contained in a set of movie contents are transmitted from a DVD player to the AV amp of a home theater appliance by way of an HDMI cable. The AV amp is connected to a front speaker, a front right speaker, a front left speaker, a rear right speaker a rear left speaker and a low tone output sub-woofer speaker. Then, the high quality sounds based on the DVD audio data supplied from the DVD player are output from the plurality of speakers.
The AV amp is connected to a television receiving set by way of an HDMI cable in order to display the images of the DVD video data. While an increasing number of HDMI-compatible television receiving sets have been marketed, the reception capacity of such television receiving sets for receiving DVD audio data is more often than not low if compared with HDMI-compatible AV amps.